Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist

I read and listened to the audiobook and the narration of the audiobook was lacking. The reader’s prosody was all off. As for the story, I found it interesting and Wright crafter Restell as the underdog who I definitely cheered for. There were a couple of dalliances from the main story. I thought learning about the Irish potato famine and its impact on New York was fun. Others in our book group didn’t appreciate the effort. I think it’s a good book for folx who want to know more about birth control and abortion pre-Roe, and for people who enjoy badass women making their way in a world that is hostile to them.

I read this book for the Morbidly Curious Book Club. The title is misleading. The author’s intent was to write a book about the history of abortion, and what a common place procedure it has been throughout the ages. When it became apparent that it would be a 1000 page book, she chose to focus on the period in 19th century America, when abortion was criminalized. Madame Restell anchors the book, but the majority of the book is not about her. Some of the things I found interesting were: 1. Premarital sex was common. As many as 1/3 of young women were pregnant at the time of their marriage. 2. By the mid 1800s, there were an estimated 30,000 homeless children in the streets of New York. 3. Orphans were treated much better than foundlings (infants abandoned immediately after birth). The first private orphanage in New York was founded in 1806. Orphanages did accept infants. As a result, they were left on street corners and doorsteps. The Infant’s Home, New York’s first foundling Asylum, did not open until 1865. Almshouses were where foundlings were supposed to be cared for, but between 1854 to 1859 nearly 90% of them died. 4. Maids with children typically found their babies unwanted in the family’s home and would have to send them away to be cared for by “baby farmers,” who would take their children and raise them for a fee. Women who worked in factories didn’t make enough money to pay someone else to take care of their children, and had to resort to drugging them with opium based medications that were marketed for that purpose. 5. Sex work paid better wages than factory and menial work. There were approximately 10,000 prostitutes in New York City by the 1840s. By the 1850s, Dr. William Sanger estimated that in New York, a woman would only work as a prostitute for on average 4 years before dying. It was estimated that only 2.35% of metropolitan prostitutes survived 14 years in the business. 6. The first written description of abortion dates back to 1550 BCE in Egypt. 7. Abortion was commonly accepted. Some states had passed laws against it, including New York, but the punishment was one year in jail or a $100 fine. Considering that practitioners could charge up to $100 for an abortion, the fine was not much of a deterrent. 8. By 1839, Madame Restell was paying about $1000 a year for advertising in two of the city’s most popular newspapers. 9. Surgeons were not held in high regard. Many didn’t attend university. Somewhere even illiterate. Up to 50% of patients undergoing surgery died during their procedure, which is one reason why hospitals made them pay in advance. By comparison, there is no evidence that anyone ever died while under.Madame Restell’s care. 10. By the mid-19th century, 1 in 5 pregnancies ended in abortion. 11. Adopted children were often seen as cheap and even free labor. Children as young as the age of one could be bound as contracted servants until the age of 18. 12. In the mid 1800s, the average American drank approximately 7.1 gallons of absolute (pure) alcohol per year. Today, the average American consumes approximately 2.48 to 2.51 gallons of alcohol per year. In addition to misleading title, I didn’t care for how much the author inserted herself into the conversation, in efforts to showcase her sense of humor.

TW: discussions of abortions, rape, sexual harassment/coercion in the workplace, alcoholism, homelessness, starvation, abandonment of children, death of children, drug overdose (including in children), sex work, death of husband, incest, child kidnapping, incarceration, racism, slavery, lynching, the Civil War, torture, death of family members, suicide. “Restell was a businesswoman, a scofflaw, an immigrant, and an abortionist. She made men really, really mad. She deserves a place in the pantheon of women with no fucks left to give.” Ann Trow, aka Madame Restell, was a well known 19th century abortionist who spent her life helping women. Madame Restell is a woman who should be a name that you would think would be pretty well known to women, especially with the current fight to protect abortion rights, but sadly, she has mostly been forgotten, probably because she was really hated for what she did. Restell’s story was a fascinating one of an immigrant coming to America with a husband and child hoping for a better life and quickly finding that it was just as hard to survive here as it was in Britain. After her husband died, things got worse for Ann but she was an extremely hard worker and eventually started working as an abortionist, which eventually became successful. So successful that she became one of the wealthiest women in the city and had a beautiful horse drawn carriage, lavish dresses, and the best education for her daughter. While Restell did help many women by providing access to abortions, we also see that she was a flawed person. She wasn’t doing this to help women because it was the right thing to do but because it would make her money. We also see her do some very not nice things, like kidnap an unwed woman's newborn baby because she thought the woman would be better off without the child. Restell was arrested several times for providing abortions and was jailed for over a year for doing the right thing for these women, even if she was doing it for the profit. When I started this book, I knew nothing about Ann Trow, 19th century abortion history, Anthony Comstock and the Comstock laws, and everything else women had to deal with during this time period. Ann Trow Sommers (Madame Restell) was a fascinating woman who lived her life on her terms and said fuck you to anyone who got in her way. She fought for everything she had and she died on her own terms instead of letting her haters destroy her. While I don’t like some of the things she did, I really enjoyed learning about this remarkable woman and how important she was for so many women in New York during the 1800’s. Also, it was remarkable that she reportedly never had any deaths from her abortions. “American’s are entering a new age of Comstockery, where if women do not want to be mothers, they will be made to be.” I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning about remarkable women performing illegal abortions successfully when surgery was still extremely dangerous and abortions were illegal, and now are again. Also, the epilogue is really poignant right now and discusses our current situation with the overturning of Roe v Wade.

This is likely a fascinating story, just told by the wrong person (& read by the wrong audiobook narrator). I couldn't get past the bizarre accent the reader gave Madame Restell. Plus at 20% in, I'm just so bored. DNF.

Abortion and Jennifer Wright? Two of my favorite things together?



CAN'T WAIT!
(but will wait)

Note: Before anyone freaks out that I just love me some abortions in a mad scientist sort of way, "two of my favorite things" above refers to the topic of abortion and making-history-fun-yet-informative-in-a-way-my-history-teachers-definitely-didn't authors. Breathe, Susan, breathe.